MRI exams could be less noisy and stressful, thanks to engineering students at University of Florida.
They have come up with a headset that pipes in sounds on top of the repetitive noises the MRI makes.
So far engineers have reduced noise similar to an MRI by fifteen decibels. This would reduce the subjective loudness by more than half.
Engineer Stephen Forguson says the headset could stop patients wriggling about due to noise and resultingly there would be a reduction in the number of repeat examinations.
The MRI presented special challenges in designing the headset, since any metal in the chamber can distort the images.
Forguson says: “All these were hard technical difficulties to overcome, but mostly it’s that we couldn’t put any electronics in there. And we had to come up with a new way to cancel noise that really had never been done as far as we could tell.”
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